A trip through the International Museum of Surgical Science in Chicago will make you glad you live in the modern world instead of the "good old days"! Wired has a gallery of exhibit photos ranging from a skull that belonged to a trepanation patient to early x-ray machines. Pictured is a vest used in 1899 to correct scoliosis. If this were posted as a "What Is It?" I would guess it to be an instrument of torture. Link -via Digg

some vests/braces used by young severe scoliosis patients still look like that! They're just made of plastic and are not riveted together...still, they look very uncomfortable. My friend had to wear one for months before she could get surgery and always had nasty callouses where the brace dug into her skin :(